General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Given that WotC released less and less relevant-to-my-gaming products over the years, they became less and less relevant to me.
Now that they quite deliberately and calculatedly destroyed a major path to playing vintage D&D, their quite frankly offensive policies matter a great deal to me.
Go rot, WotC management.
Don't keep it in, tell us what you really feel.
I decided after reading the first version of the GSL that I would not support 4e and the GSL. Dropping PDFs was just more of the same, but since I had already dropped WotC it does not effect my buying habits.
WotC used to be a company that I could respect, the OGL was one of the best things for gaming in years. The company may yet pull itself out of what I see as a decline, but it appears that the hill has become steeper.
The Auld Grump
__________________ Oh, I am a cook, and a captain bold, and the mate of the Nancy brig,
The midship mite,
And the Bo'sun tight,
And the crew of the captain's gig...
But it does affect the quality of the products available to me. That's why I'm so upset.
I liked the print Dungeon and Dragon: gone.
I liked 3pp: mostly gone.
I expected full insider upon 4e release: never came (yet) and possibly never will.
I liked being able to buy PDFs: gone.
But it is more than that. They constantly say one thing and do another. It raises hopes and then dashes them. To anyone who frequented the insider emags when they were free: remember "The best adventure I never wrote?" Cross city chase won. Has it come out?
The forums finally get some solid communication going on and they just keep firing the people actually reaching out to customers.
There came a point for me in the past, and it has only been reinforced/reiterated with all of their actions since then (i.e. they have not done anything to garner my trust, but they've done plenty to wreck it) that I decided I was tired of feeling "jerked around" by them and their press releases. I don't want to invest more in that.
There are other avenues I can pursue (plenty of other companies and similar or different game systems) where I don't feel jerked around. Where would you spend your money?
Company policies, to the extent that I am aware of them of course, certainly do affect my choices as a consumer. This is by no means restricted to WotC, or just producers of gaming books or whatever.
I know a lot of people whose choices are also affected in this way, to whatever extent, and whichever issues are in question.
Some say, 'support WotC, or gaming will die!!1!'. BS. Support companies and individuals who support gaming and gamers, or gaming might well suffer. Not die - I don't believe that for a second, but suffer, yes. Diminish? Yeah, quite possibly that too.
There are other, sometimes rather more dire, reasons why I don't support various other - totally unrelated - businesses. But I think mentioning them by name, let alone possible reasons to personally deny them profits or any other kind of support, would be outside the boundaries set here. So yeah, WotC is by far not the biggest, most ugly ogre out there. But some of what they have done over the last one and a half years or so. . . I won't simply put up with. Likewise, any other RPG company who decides to be just as arrogant, offensive, condescending, thoughtless, careless, and repeatedly misleading.
Here's how it affects my enjoyment of the game. . .
I don't play 4e, I don't like 4e, and my gaming group has thoroughly and utterly rejected 4e. We play 3.5, and we still use "fluff" from editions even older than that (2e has some magnificent setting materials, even if the rules are a little clunky).
The only way WotC got any money from me was the few times I bought one of those older-edition .pdf's because I couldn't find a hardcopy of an older supplement I wanted through other secondary channels (used bookstores, eBay ect.). I strongly prefer hardcopy to .pdf (although that's what a printer is for), but at least WotC made some tiny effort to make things available for those of us who prefer older editions.
What this means to me is that it makes it a little harder for me to get some old books I might want. Not that I bought .pdfs of older edition materials often, but I have before, and it looks like I won't anymore.
What I won't do is subscribe to some incredibly hobbled, heavy-DRM or subscription-only model where I have to view things through some secure viewer on WotC's site, where once I stop paying each month they vanish, where I can't print things out. It's just not that worth it.
I loved Dragon Magazine, and I've got shelves full of that magazine, especially the Paizo era (and most of the pre-Paizo stuff is on the archive CD-ROM), but once it went online only. . .I just ignore it completely. There is a huge difference to me between something you actually have in a magazine that I can subscribe and actually show up in my postal mailbox once per month to or go to my FLGS and pick up a copy, and some paid-access website that they call a magazine for branding purposes.
I loved Forgotten Realms: then they blew it up, they blew it all up (insert Charlton Heston rant here)! Turning the Forgotten Realms into the "Fourgotten Realms" as I've heard it called by smashing the Realms into little bits with the biggest RSE ever and shoving the remaining fragments into a 4e shaped box meant that I wouldn't even buy the 4e realms books for fluff even if I rejected the crunch (and I'm not exactly interested in any novels in this post-apocalyptic world that is supposedly the Realms either).
It's almost like WotC is doing everything it can to lose my business.
As long as I'm enjoying the game, I really don't care what WoTC does outside of providing good content for the money. If I play the game and don't enjoy it, that's the real problem. I never bought the PDFs because I thought they were too expensive. Didn't matter cause I had the physical books. Did that effect me? No. The GLS didn't effect me negatively. It probably saved me money. This latest move doesn't effect me cause I never bought the PDF's in the first place. I can see where others might be annoyed and angered mind you but me personally? Nope.
What I cannot understand is the mentality that has people saying they will no longer support a company for reasons that hvae nothing to do with the price or quality of their product.
I think you look at it from a wrong perspective.
When you buy a roleplaying game product one of the defining motivation for you is that you believe: the company that designs the game knows their game and knows their hobby well, and you can be sure that these rules are based on this knowledge.
When a such company shows they don't know that people shared rulebooks at gaming tables, and with vrtual gametables it has to work the same way so there will be PDF copying, that is one point where you question this knowledge.
When they put handouts, graphics you should show to players, etc. in a file you can't edit (so you can't only send pages) and encourage you to use it online, then sue others for sending the file for players, you might ask: Have they even considered how their game works?
Have they even considered how the numerous demo groups that promote the game can work online or offline?
The trust in the developer that makes them stand above random collection of house rules, one of the major reasons to buy a rulebook is broken.
But this isn't the only important factor. So far, I had a game where it was enough of some of the party busy the supplements (even if it was me) and it was true from day #1, with this changed, we see increased costs, AND less players who can afford it.
One of the strongest qualities for the D&D game was the huge playerbase. If less parties can afford it since WOTC no longer understands that a book is shared withing parties (even hardcopies) from day #1, then that is a rapid increase in price, and realy bad in cases of modules that could be shared between many parties are same club, etc.
AND the price increase as we see come with a smaller community so comes with a huge drop in quality.
So far people who paid for content once, thought if they can't carry all the books comfortably, accessibility of PDF (even if they don't use yet) can help if you can't play at your hometown. No more PDFs? You lost this chance, and it can hurt your chances at playing with like minden players in present and future.
And the people who bought the PDFs for this reasons can't come to your town anymore, so both sides of the coin can see this damage.
You think it ends here? Let me add one more point: So far, I knew people were willing to run demo groups online, even if they had to send pdf to players, these new players added a lot to the community, and ability to see new product lines made sure you bought product lines you can actually enjoy. This changed.
Same reason some people don't buy products from manufacturers who are known to use child labor in sweatshops. They don't want to support a company that performs in ways that the buyer objects to (even if they like the end product).
(Note: I am not comparing WotC's actions to child labor.)
Exactly, I stopped supporting lots of businesses cause I disagree with their policy or how their policy affects us the people. I mean without getting political look at our world compared to 30 years ago.....IMO the greed and distrust is way out of control. To me it's no longer about pleasing the customer but rather bleeding us dry the most efficient way. LOL Rant off.
I can understand the threads about gamers stating distaste with 4th edition and how they no longer wish to support the company because of that. What I cannot understand is the mentality that has people saying they will no longer support a company for reasons that hvae nothing to do with the price or quality of their product.
What I can't understand is :
Us: Dude, the fish sandwiches in this place cause ptomaine poisoning!
You: Haha! Joke's on them! I'm ordering a hamburger!
Parenthetically, photostat copies of the manuscript rules were made, and when the commercial game was published, fans not willing or financially unable to expend the princely sum of $10 for the product did likewise, copying the material on school (mainly college/university) machines. We were well aware of this, and many gamers who had spent their hard-earned money to buy the game were more irate than we were. In all, though, the 'pirate' material was more helpful that not. Many new fans were made by DMs who were using such copies to run their games. - Gary Gygax
It's called "ethics". Putting the current disaster aside for a moment, if you honestly don't understand that there is more to consider in life than price and quality, I doubt that someone here can explain it to you.
I would say that I do have ethics. I would also say that while the decision to discontinue .pdf distribution is questionable in its effectiveness, it is not exactly something that strikes me as having much of an ethical component. To me, this is no different than having a neighbor who one day puts up a fence. Up until that day, maybe they did not mind the neighbor kids playing in their yard. The local kids may not like the fence, but it really is not their yard to begin with.
A quick run down of my position on the issue of .pdf distribution.
- Wizards was stupid to let other companies sell .pdf's of their stuff in the first place.
- Wizards should have come up with some sort of copy protection system instead of letting raw .pdf files be sold at all
-- That copy protection system should allow for legitimate customers to use the content from any computer they own, to replace lost copies, and to 'own' a copy on their own HD.
- Discontinuing .pdf distribution was within their rights. Given the intent of their digital initiative, this was kind of inevitable in my mind.
-- Wizards really should provide something to customers of the affected sites that had deals that let them access the content at well to make up for screwing them.
--- However, I do not think Wizards is really under any formal obligation to do so. Everyone has a right to be an , even if it is undesireable.
- Taking the actions of a multi-million dollar company personally at any level is really just dumb.
I am convinced that Wizards has acted within their rights here. I am not entirely convinced that wizards has any ethical obligation to the customers of other companies, but I do think they ought to make a meaningful gesture to accomodate those adversely affected. But I do think that much of the noise being made stinks of the same kind of hippocracy of people who complain about Walmarts business practices, call them evil, but still shop there. Or to use another example, it is like a vegitarian who refuses to eat meat on ethical grounds, but will still pay extra for an all leather interior for their car. THe opinion does not really carry that much weight.
On the subject of my ethics, based on my ethical stance against hippocracy, Wizards actions do not affect me enough to make me rethink being a customer, so I wont complain here. Considering that I also believe that Wizards are within their rights here, the only questions to my mind with D&D are still about Price, Quality, and product availability.
If this is truly that strong an ethical issue for you, then I will accept that as your answer, but disagree with it. I am just wondering exactly what ethical boundary it is that so many people think they crossed here.
Does WotC's repeated PR blunders affect my enjoyment of the game? Heck no. I enjoy playing 3.5, RoboRally, and a variety of other WotC games they've produced and I've bought over the years.
But will I use their behavior to guide future purchases? Yes. Even if I might enjoy the future products? Yes.
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
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